Friday, 10 April 2020

Temple Bell Butterfly: The Dream of the Butterfly, the Fall of the Warrior

釣鐘に止まりてねむる胡蝶かな
tsurigane ni tomarite nemuru kochō kana[1]

on the temple bell
sleeping
a butterfly
—Buson[2]

Myohon Temple, Kamakura by Hasui Kawase
“Myohon Temple, Kamakura” by Hasui Kawase

This may be Buson’s most famous haiku[3]. It stands on it’s own as a peaceful and simple little verse, but let’s dig in a little deeper.

It is a spring haiku and the season word is butterfly. Butterflies in haiku are traditionally nearly always a reference to Chuang-tzu and his questions about the nature of reality.[4]

One night Chuang-tzu dreamed he was a butterfly. All day long he floated here and there, without care of who he was or where he was going. Upon waking, he asked himself:

不知周之夢為胡蝶與，胡蝶之夢為周與
“Am I a Man”, he thought,
“who dreamed that I was a butterfly?
Or am I butterfly, dreaming that I am a man?”[5]

In Buson’s verse, presumably the butterfly will wake and fly away soon enough, as soon as the surrounding quiet is broken, making his stay on the bell a temporary rest. The impermanence of life is a constant theme in Japan. It is why the cherry blossoms are so beloved, for instance, because they remind us of the transience of life. Just as the butterfly will be woken soon from his sleep, so will we. Perhaps woken to find out that we are that butterfly?

But there is more than that going on here.

The most famous epic in Japan is Heike Monogatari, The Tale of the Heike. It has been called the Japanese Iliad, and that’s not a bad comparison to help you understand it’s importance to Japanese culture. It tells the true story of the Genpei War (1180–1185), the rise and the fall of the Taira clan (the Heike), of their head, Kiyomori, his rise and his downfall, and of the clan’s eventual fall to the Minamoto (the Genji). A major theme of the story is one of impermanence. What begins, must end. The famous opening of the epic (which all schoolchildren in Japan have to memorize) sums it up:

The ring of the bells at Gion temple
echoes the impermanence of all things.
The color of the sala flowers
reveals the truth that to flourish is to fall.
The proud do not endure long
like a passing dream on a spring night.
The mighty fall at last,
like dust in the wind

Somewhat fittingly, the family crest of the Taira was a butterfly:

Kiyomori’s dream to control Japan, like the dream of a butterfly resting on a temple bell.

There is a good reason why this is Buson’s most famous haiku. It is doing a lot of work, not only painting us a pleasant scene, but also leading us to Chuang-tzu and his dream of being a butterfly and to Kiyomori and his dream of controlling Japan.

[Last updated: 6 Aug 2025]

  1. See: Pronunciation of Japanese  ↩

  2. See: a note on translations  ↩

  3. Or hokku, as that’s what it was called in Buson’s day. The term haiku didn’t come until a hundred years later. I’ll write more about this in the future.  ↩

  4. Chuang-tzu is the Wade-Giles way of romanizing 荘子. Newer books, using the Pinyin system, may instead romanize it as Zhuangzi. The Japanese on the other hand will pronounce his name as Sōshi. I use Chuang-tzu instead of the others because English speakers are likely much more familar with it.  ↩

  5. trans. Richard Zipoli  ↩

Thursday, 9 April 2020

A Ninja Expert Explains Why Ninjas Aren’t Real

GQ’s Charlie Burton interviews Stephen Turnbull about ninjas:

“If the ninja have any basis in fact, the following three criteria must be satisfied,” says Turnbull. “One, that a unique corpus of military techniques involving secrecy existed in Japan during the Sengoku Period [c. 1487 – 1603]. Two, that the exercise of these techniques was confined to certain skilled individuals rather than being spread more widely within Japanese society. And three, these skilled practitioners were identified in particular with [the areas] Iga and Kōka, from where they sold their services to others.”

The title of the piece is a bit misleading. It isn’t examining whether ninjas exist currently, but whether they ever existed.

LINK: A Ninja Expert Explains Why Ninjas Aren’t Real

How to Say LaSpina

For most of my childhood, no one could say my name correctly1. I always dreaded first days of the school year and new teachers, or substitute teachers throughout the year, because my name would invariably be said wrong and I would have to correct them. It was frustrating.

The problem is in most Latin languages i is pronounced with an EE sound (as in fleece), which is a bit different from the sound we give the letter in English (which is as in kit). Using typical English pronunciation rules, nearly everyone attempted my name as Lah Spin-ah. Some misguided souls would even give an ae (as in ash) sound to the first a, rendering it Lae Spin-ah.

Ahhh… it’s all coming back. Now that I think about it, I remember that being the prefered mispronunciation.

sigh. As usual I’d think, wearily, as I raised my hand. “Actually it is pronounced…”

Most of my time online2 I have ignored the issue, letting anyone who stumbles upon my website pronounce it in their heads as they will, but now that I have made my domain the same name I should probably tackle the issue.

The name is Italian. My dad was born in Sicily, as was his dad, and later immigrated to New York before ending up in Indiana where I was born. The correct way to say it sounds something like Lah Spee-nah. My grandfather said it with an Italian accent. My father with a Brooklyn accents. And me with a Hoosier accent3. Whatever your accent may be, just try to get that second syllable correct4.

And now you know.5

  1. They still can’t, at least in America.  ↩

  2. Which dates back to sometime in the early 90s when I signed up for the futuristic service, Prodigy, connecting to it with my trusty 2400 baud modem. I can still hear the sound of that modem as it sent out all manner of strange noises as it negotiated a connection over the phone line.  ↩

  3. That’s Indiana, to all you non-Hoosiers.  ↩

  4. Interestingly, most people in Japan can and do say my name correctly, where I write it as ラスピナ (rasupina); in practice the u in su is whispered so that, with the exception of the r in front (in Japanese r and l is the same), it comes out pretty close to the real pronunciation.  ↩

  5. And knowing is half the battle  ↩

Wednesday, 8 April 2020

Almost there…

Hello, random visitor. Glad you stumbled your way here. Work is still in progress, as you can see, but we are getting there. What to expect when things are finished?

Adventure? Excitement? Hmm… maybe.

Fortune and glory? Naw, probably not.

What you will find are haiku translations and commentary, photos from Japan, and other thoughts and observations about the Land of the Rising Sun, which is where I’ve been living for the past 14 years. Some misc posts too, I’m sure.

If that sounds interesting, be sure to check back soon. I hope to have things up and running within a few days.

P.S. That long copyright date down there? That’s because this is the continuation of a blog I ran for many years at JapanDave.com (it’s not there anymore, so don’t bother looking).

There is more in the archives